Ashburn
by eliska
Summary: It wasn't anything new, he thought, as he watched his surroundings go up in flames. Oneshot, mild slash. Craig/Christophe.


So. I wanted to try something different this time, but it turned out... weird. Awkward, even. Or maybe it's just because of the pairing, and the fact that I epically fail at doing Christophe's accent.

Constructive criticism please? And thanks :)

* * *

"It was a pleasure to burn." – _Fahrenheit 451_

* * *

He watched his surroundings burn a bright, luminous orange.

It was, he supposed, something of a relief. Maybe he was, despite the tough exterior he presented, desperate for some reprieve—something that would take him away from here. Somehow, through the wrongs and rights he realized that perhaps he _did_ care, after all. But if it were true, that would be a small—insignificant, and wholly idiotic—part of him. Craig Tucker did not give a fuck about anything. It was a near impossibility, an illusion of some insane nightmare.

The phone rang and rang, somewhere in the distance.

Craig smiled wanly. _The world could wait for all I care. My parents don't care, and neither do my so-called friends. Why should I, then?_

Only the soft hisses and cackling of the flames answered him, nothing more.

Closer, closer…

Slowly but consistently the orange and yellow hues crept towards him, danced along the walls and waltzed across the carpet, beckoning to the raven-haired boy. It burned and burned and burned everything in its path, burned in his eyes and burrowed into the depths of his mind. He was as naked as Adam was, the sweat profuse on his forehead and back—waiting, for the serpentine flames to bring forth the apple of sin.

Maybe the people had come screaming in flocks at last, staring in shock and awe at the pillars of smoke and flame rising up towards the blue, blue sky. Maybe they had cared, at the very last.

Some things remain memories at best. But some he never bothered to remember.

* * *

He woke up in a world of pitch black.

"Where the fuck am I?!" was Craig's first reaction. Him bumping his head on something in the dark was the second. He swore.

Then he remembered the fire, and everything that followed. It was cramped and hot where he lay, and he wondered if he was in some kind of hospital, or if anyone had even bothered to go find him at all. Strangely, there was no pain, no symptoms of smoke-inhalation or scorching burns on his skin. Had he ran out in his subconscious at the last minute?

"Where am I?" Again, this time barely a whisper. There came the sound of footsteps, far away, and whisperings that felt almost… surreal. It was as if the space distorted the sounds, fuzzed them out and made them into indescribable tones and pitches of something not entirely human, or even earthly. It rose and fell, whimpered and moaned, slithering sneakily down the hallways (if there were any) and creeping along the walls. He shuddered slightly as the sounds seemed to approach, a movement he'd never experienced before in his life.

The door—was it a door, really, or something else…?—let out a coughing creak, and light flooded in eerily onto his face.

"Craig Tucker," a voice said, flatly. "Sixteen. Cause of death: burns; suicide. Will be transported to the Waiting Room for further—"

"Eh, Damien, vy iz he 'ere, zen? New 'uns in _enregistrement_." Another voice, sounding impatient, rang out in the gloom. "Zis eez de storage room, _non_?"

Craig stared. _What the fuck, am I… dead? Is this Hell, or…?_ "Excuse me, but where exactly—"

A flickering of the light, and he could finally see what the owners of the two voices looked like—two young men, looking about the same age as he was but not exactly… human. One of them looked more or less like someone who belonged there—familiar?—with a tousle of mousy brown hair and clothed in what looked like army wear. He was tall, Craig decided, even though he couldn't really judge by the way he was half-sitting and they were standing. Taller than the other one, at least, who had begun speaking again, "I don't know, Christophe. They must've fucked up the portals again; stupid things never really did work well, I guess."

His crimson eyes swept across the room, finally landing on the boy. "This is, well, Hell. Follow me."

Craig resisted an urge to flip him off.

* * *

"Do you like it here?" Christophe turned around, raising an eyebrow at the often-asked question that new arrivals almost always asked. It wasn't as if he wanted to be Damien's assistant—heck, who wanted to sort through five thousand fucking registration papers a day? But upon his arrival he'd had a choice of going with the other boy (who'd taken an interest in him, though the feeling was not mutual) and getting tortured by Saddam (who was by all rights supposedly… dead. Although Christophe would not put it past Satan to resurrect his lover _again_, even after the war.)

"_Oui._ Better 'ere zan up zere in 'eaven. God hates me an' I feel ze same for 'im; vy should I go zere?" He lit a smoke. "You smoke, _mon ami_?"

"Sometimes."

The Frenchman smiled wryly at him. "You like eet?"

"Why does it matter?" Craig felt somewhat unnerved in spite of himself, looking at the other boy with a mixture of respect and slight confusion.

"Eet does not matter zat much, I suppose. I am just asking." Shrugging, the brunette ambled off into the building. "Maybe you'll like eet one day. Who knows? All of us have _curiosité_."

It still felt weird to Craig. But a different kind of weird, maybe something less weird than it should be. A familiar kind of eeriness, the kind of shit South Park goes through every day.

And besides, he was probably going to be stuck in Hell for a long, long time.

* * *

The days passed like a slow, winding river that never really knew if it were ever going to reach the sea.

Craig had been assigned to the task of gathering records for the registry. He didn't know what garnered him this special seat, since most of the new arrivals went straight to either the Waiting Room to be sorted or to Purgatory. But he had seen Christophe's knowing smile throughout the days he worked, and that was enough for an answer. Sure, the black-haired boy was something of a cold bastard, but he was grateful enough for the distraction. He missed Earth—even with its fucked up ways and the mostly idiotic populace—and its greenness and open skies. Down in Hell there were two main colors: crimson and black. They didn't do shit to help his eyesight, and besides, it'd almost always been the same up there.

If there had ever been a time where he'd wished for something in his life, he wished that he would go back. It was clichéd, of course, but still hope remained. Time was ambiguous down where he was, named and numbered differently than the life of his past; it was an insidious sort of thing, vague, slipping through the edges of nothingness even as he observed it.

He also wondered frequently what those glances from the Frenchman meant.

Every now and then he thought of ideas completely different but dared not discuss it with anyone. It was completely absurd, of course, the idea that he could and would be anything more than friends with Christophe.

* * *

"Do you 'ave time now, _mon ami_?"

"Christophe, can't you see I'm in the fucking middle of—"

"I haf something to tell you. _Très important_."

* * *

Sometimes absurdity turned to necessity.

And sometimes necessity was forged to prevent the prevailing emotions that betrayed both of them.

Of course Damien wasn't exactly thrilled with it, but there was no other way. Things happen and that was that. He still had Pip's condolences. And probably his dick, too, if things turned out right at the end.

* * *

"You're going back up zere." It wasn't a question but a statement. Craig simply stared at him, the smoky blue air rising around them. Sighing, Christophe flicked away the remains of his cigarette. "Zey haf done ze papers. Zey are sending you back there, do you _comprenez_?"

"But aren't I supposed to—"

"_Non._ Eet eez final. You are, ah, qualified, as zey say." He was silent for a moment. "Zey don't like, you know, us doing zis. _Séparation_ for some time. Zen you come back, maybe in a veek, maybe in a year. I do not know."

The brunette watched as the other boy's face became stony, resolute. He did not like the decision much himself, as it was obvious to why they were in a hurry to send Craig away again. He was… distracting. And as Hell was a busy place as any; obstacles to the efficiency of the process were always and permanently removed. They didn't like it when anything got in the way, and even more so when said thing also happened to be the subject of their boss's—Damien's—ire.

Life wasn't fair. And the ironic downside of it was death was even more unfair. It was even jealous of your motives and who you made out with, and to Craig that was just fucking stupid.

* * *

He watched sullenly as the demon officials rushed back and forth, getting ready for his departure. Earlier a commotion had been caused by him flipping off one of those assholes for stepping on his bruised toe, and they now looked at him with much more malice and distrust than before.

Oh, well. He'd seen too many of those looks before.

"I trust you vill return, _oui_?" Black pools reflected his mildly frustrated façade, and Craig smiled, a slight ghost of a twitch on his lips.

For the very last time.

"I will."

"Better not die too soon." A pause. "Or zey vill think eet eez on purpose. You vill not die zat easily again, _non_? Or I will call you a fucking pussy."

_You have no idea how right you fucking are._

* * *

He left, leaving behind him memories and thoughts and comforts. He left behind the one that mattered the most to him. Softly and silently they steal back into his mind on some days, lazy days that did not warrant much apart from luminescent globs of memories and ideas that would not fade away with time.

There was a lingering sense of déjà vu, that something similar had happened before and had caused some sort of disruption in his life. He could remember, but only fragmented parts that shone with brilliance; the others were much faded, things he could not remember because of the brainwashing they had given him right before he left. But still there were remains of an older time, from a time and space far away that he could not remember.

From time to time he climbs up to places where nobody could see him and remembers, always with a sense of bittersweet longing for something or someone he could not remember. Maybe he did not want to remember, but who knew? Things do not cease to be just because we wish it so, and they can change—shatter into fragments or expand into an idea, something larger than life.

And those things were there, always, irrepressible and ultimately necessary.

On the left side of his bed, there was a shovel—dirty, rusting, and ugly, but nevertheless a shovel; a memory, a figment of a lonely caressing from beyond the realm of the mind, a fire that burned on.


End file.
